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Dr Nicholas Sage

Additional teachers may include: Paul MacMahon, Charlie Webb

This course is compulsory on the BA in Anthropology and Law and LLB in Laws. This course is not available as an outside option nor to General Course students.

Contracts are essential to most business transactions. Contract law also shapes interpersonal relations in many other areas of life. This course introduces the general principles of contract law, including contract formation, interpretation, defences (eg misrepresentation, duress), breach, and remedies. Students will learn to apply these principles to resolve concrete legal problems. Students will also be invited to reflect on whether the existing legal doctrines are justifiable in light of their important social consequences.

The focus will be on the common law of contract as developed in England. This body of law is articulated largely through judicial decisions, supplemented by some detailed legislation. The course will aim to foster the lawyerly skills of closely reading, reasoning about, and debating the key legal sources.

16 hours of lectures and 9 hours of classes in the AT. 20 hours of lectures and 10 hours of classes in the WT. 2 hours of lectures and 1 hour of classes in the ST.

The course is delivered through weekly two-hour lectures and one-hour classes. There are mid-term reading weeks in AT and WT.



16 hours of lectures and 9 hours of classes in AT. 20 hours of lectures and 9 hours of classes in WT. 1 hour of classes in ST.

The first two hours of classes in AT will introduce aspects of the legal system.

Two formative written assessments, one in AT and one in WT.

 

We will read a wide range of case law, as well as statutes and legal scholarship. Here is a representative selection of five readings, versions of which may be found online:



• Gibson v Manchester City Council [1979] 1 WLR 294 (HL) – available at BAILII

• Williams v Roffey Bros & Nicholls (Contractors) Ltd [1991] 1 QB 1 (CA) – BAILII

• Co-operative Insurance Society Ltd v Argyll Stores (Holdings) Ltd [1998] AC 1 (HL) – BAILII

• Consumer Rights Act 2015 – legislation.gov.uk

• Stephen A Smith, ‘Contracting Under Pressure: A Theory of Duress’ [1997] Cambridge Law Journal 343 - JSTOR

Exam (100%, duration: 3 hours, reading time: 15 minutes) in the spring exam period.